


Steps Forward

by Kennel_Boy



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: M/M, Prompt Fill, Secret Santa, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:22:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28185342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kennel_Boy/pseuds/Kennel_Boy
Summary: Billy Rocks tends to Goodnight in the aftermath of Rose Creek. Secret Santa exchange - giftee requested a sickfic, and I think this about qualifies. ;) Merry, merry, sweetheart!
Relationships: Goodnight Robicheaux/Billy Rocks
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	Steps Forward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whereverigobillygoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereverigobillygoes/gifts).



The clouds had rolled in after dark, while the good citizens of Rose Creek were dragging corpses off the street by lantern light. 

The rain started at dawn and stayed for seven days. 

Billy Rocks didn’t mind the rain. More accurate to say, he barely noticed it. His bandaged arm and its supporting sling warranted hardly more notice than the weather. All his attention was on the man in the bed, a man who’d been riddled with bullets and fallen off a church roof, and yet still lived. A man who’d been cut into, sewn up, and bled pale as the moon, who’d been dosed with laudanum and had his plastered limbs bound in place to keep any inadvertent movement from snuffing out the unsteady candle flame of his life.

Billy hated thunder. He’d always hated how the hollow booming through the walls reminded him of being chained in a steamer hold as the ship tossed on the waves. And right now, he hated it even more for Goodnight’s sake. 

He hadn’t a doubt that Goodnight could hear all that went on around him, even wrapped in the fog of sleep. But he was trapped by his own drugged flesh, hearing the roar of phantom guns in every crash of thunder without even the relief of being able to scream his fear out into the night.

So he kept vigil for as long as his battered body would allow, murmuring into Goodnight’s ear in the spaces between the thunder. He speaks in Joseon. Goodnight understood only a few select phrases and a handful of profane words in Billy’s native tongue, but it didn’t matter. The words will let Goodnight know beyond all doubt that Billy’s still with him. That, he hopes, will be enough of a lifeline to anchor him to this world.

* * *

The doctor offered no false hope. Goodnight wasn’t a young man, and his trauma was severe.

(Billy grew quickly impatient with the word “trauma”, spoken in the doctor’s deep, burring voice. The word was soft and wrong. Goodnight didn’t have “trauma”, he had wounds. He had broken bones and flesh torn up by bullets.)

If he managed to survive the blood loss and escape infection, that on its own would be a miracle. It was too much to expect that he would have full use of his limbs again, but possibly he’d be able to get around on his own.

Billy hardly listened. It wasn’t worth thinking about the days ahead until Goodnight opened his eyes.

* * *

Goodnight opened his eyes on the fifth day.

The first thing he did was ask if Billy had made it. 

The second was to use what little strength was in his ruined body to turn away from the drugged cup the doctor held to his lips. 

Goodnight didn’t use laudinaum to quiet his demons. It wasn’t something Billy had known until he’d bought Goodnight a bottle himself, after a particularly bad night. He’d learned then, once upon a time, that Goodnight had rarely been without that medicine at hand, until another particularly bad night, some years before, had resulted in his dosing himself too heavily. 

“Can’t bring myself to trust the stuff now,” Goodnight had explained. “It wasn’t that I wanted to live so badly, you see, Billy. It was being trapped between dead and alive. Dreaming and just barely aware at once, and not being able to tip over into death. That’s a living hell I dare not court again - reckon that’s one more route I’m not brave enough to die by, not if that’s the price of the journey.”

Billy had no clue if Goodnight remembered that conversation. All he knew was that Goodnight was looking to him in the moment, pleading.

“I don’t want it, Billy,” he rasped. “Don’t let ‘em make me…”

“Goody.” Billy put a hand on his brow. “Goody, I’m here. I’m not going to let it happen again. Just drink. I’ll pull you back if it gets bad.”

A lie, probably. Billy had no idea how to coax a man from a land of opium dreams, not without a good deal more violence than Goodnight’s body could endure. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that, lie or not, Goody trusted him enough to subside and take his dose.

If it was a lie and they had a later, Billy reckoned they could talk about it then. He went back to watching Goodnight sleep.

* * *

Billy wasn’t used to slow death. Back in Tongman, his purpose had been to kill swiftly and silently at the direction of another. Even on the railroad, an unending stretch of hell, death came quickly - avalanche, explosions, even illness rarely lasted more than a couple of days before recovery was assumed or the ill left behind. 

Watching Goodnight hover between life and death day after day left them both in the same trap. 

Goodnight woke only for brief stretches, barely lucid. The room seemed to stink of his necessary functions, even with the windows open for airing and the sheets laundered. Billy took over the intimate duties of feeding, swaddling, and washing as soon as his arm was mended enough for it, sparing Goodnight some dignity, even if he wasn’t fully aware of the gesture.

It was strange work for an assassin - foul, heart-tearing work. But the choice was to endure or to leave. 

Billy endured.

* * *

Goodnight regaining his sense brought some joy, but little reprieve - it just meant he was aware enough to refuse the cup, to experience the pain of his waning body fully, to curse his indignities. Billy could sit in the chair beside his bed, at least, and share a _madak_ cigarette out between them. It was a small intimacy, those deferred kisses, but still some small scrap of normality and comfort in their shared prison.

It was three days before Billy broached the subject.

“I can make it quick, Goody. If you want to go.” He’d rehearsed the words a hundred times by that point, run the offer of mercy over his mind until he felt ready to speak it. It still caught in his throat like a hook.

Goodnight blinked up at him, bewildered, then the slowest of smiles tangled in his uneven beard.

“That’s the only way you’re leaving, isn’t it, Billy?”

“Yeah. That doesn’t matter though. Don’t act like it does.”

“It’s more than I deserve. We both know that.”

“And if ‘deserved’ meant anything, we’d both be dead. You want to stay?”

Another slow blink. A laugh that creaked like old leather and left Goodnight winded.

“Yes, Billy Rocks, I reckon I do. Though I reserve the right to maintain my complaints of the situation.”

The answer brought a deep and complete relief, not only at knowing he wouldn’t be tasked with slicing Goodnight’s throat and cutting out his heart with the same stroke, but simply being able to plan what would come next on some level. Even if the routine didn’t change, each act was now a way of moving forward, not shuffling through an endless fog with no fixed purpose.

* * *

The infection never did come, which Goody told the doc shouldn’t have been any surprise - his blood must have been about half whiskey at the time of his magnificent flight from the bell tower, after all. Billy rolled his eyes at the joking dismissal of his dutiful caretaking, then told Goodnight he should have cut his throat while he had the chance. 

Goodnight cackled in delight as the doctor quickly excused himself from the room. 

He wasn’t nearly so cheerful about the pressure sores that came as he lay abed, still weeks from mobility. He cursed God and Billy too, even as the latter bandaged his legs to protect the disintegrating skin and cursed Goodnight right back for his ingratitude, without so much as batting an eye.

Sometimes, he let Goodnight’s yelling carry him out onto the front porch of the doctor’s practice, until it faded into meaningless noise behind him. 

The doctor wasn’t a bad sort. He sometimes tried to comfort Billy in those moments. Assured him Goodnight was only acting out of pain and pride, that he’d figure out he was lucky to have such a dedicated servant. 

It always amazed Billy, in a mild and distant way, that a man trained to diagnose was so blind. But it wasn’t any of the man’s business anyway what his situation with Goodnight was, so Billy didn’t tell how free he was to walk away, or that Goodnight was in far more danger of reprisal than Billy ever was when Billy lost his composure enough to yell back, or that there was a reason Billy made sure to keep his knives out of reach of him and Goodnight both, hung up on the lantern hook in the doc’s front room most of the time, as the days wore on and their tempers flared.

Billy smoked a cigarette, let the doctor attempt to assuage a non-existent fear, and stared out onto the dusty streets of Rose Creek, wondering what kind of life two bachelors whose main talents lay in hustling and killing might scratch out there.

* * *

Cool autumn breezes were nipping the heels of summer by the time Goodnight could make his way out onto the porch, even with help. It seemed to Billy that his man weighed no more than a sack of flour, wasted and thin where Billy’s maintenance of Goody’s body had helped keep his own in good condition. 

Goodnight was breathing, though. That was more than Billy had dared hope for just a few weeks back.

“Well,” Goodnight mused. “Here we are.”

“And here we’ll stay. A while longer, anyway. A snake would stay in the saddle easier than you could right now.”

“Thank you, Billy; I had not forgotten.” Goodnight breathed deep, seeming to savor simply being outside the close confines of the doctor’s back room. “So. Here we are.”

“Yeah.” Billy gave the sharp blade of Goodnight’s shoulder a squeeze.

“What do you reckon’s next, then?”

Billy took his time lighting two cigarettes, letting his gaze rove over the street and the people occasionally nodding greetings their way. 

They’d wanted for nothing during Goodnight’s convalescence. Billy hadn’t missed a meal once the business of burial had been sorted out; hell, sometimes he’d found himself with two dinners before the womenfolk got their schedule worked out. He wasn’t sure how many chickens and personal stores of honey, cider, and juice had been sacrificed to the days when Goodnight had been too weak for anything other than a liquid diet. And no one had taken a dime of his money when he’d tried to pay.

Rose Creek had done right by them.

Billy wasn’t sure that meant he wanted to stay. And he still had no answer to the question of what kind of life the two of them could scratch out here.

He handed Goodnight a cigarette.

“I’ve been doing all the work these past months, _yangnom_. Time for you to come up with something.”

So long as their next step was together, Billy reckoned he didn’t much care where it took them.


End file.
